ROAPE Publications Ltd

Notes on Capital and Peasantry

Author(s): Henry Bernstein
Source: Review of African Political Economy, No. 10, Peasants (Sep. - Dec., 1977), pp. 60-73
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3997920
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 60

Notes on Capital and Peasantry

Henry Bernstein

Bernstein examines the diverse ways in which capital and the colonial state
incorporated rural producers into the production and consumption of com-
modities as the means of securing their own subsistence. Regulations, services
and the monopoly of crop producers have been used to require an often recal-
citrant peasantry to organize production to meet the requirements of inter-
national capital and the local state for particular commodities, for trading
profits, and for revenues and foreign exchange. The peasantry must be analysed
in its relations with capital and the state, in varying concrete conditions, which
means within capitalist relations of production. These are mediated not through
the wage relation, but through various forms of household production by
producers who are not fully expropriated, and who are engaged in a struggle
with capital/state for effective possession and control of the conditions of
production.

Introduction
1. The purpose of these brief notes is to set out in a preliminary way some of
the issues concerning the relations of capitalism and peasantry, and some of the
concepts that can be employed in the analysis of these relations. To avoid
unnecessary complication at this stage, questions concerning various modes of
production prior to the penetration of capital are ignored, as are recent debates
concerning the articulation of modes of production (stimulated by the work of
C. Meillassoux and P.P. Rey in particular).

2. These notes try to avoid the following errors that often occur in discussions
of this theme:
(a) an essentialist conception of capitalism in which homogenous 'interests' or
'laws of motion' of capital (in general) serve as predicates from which all else
follows (see J. Clarke in Critique of Anthropology No.8);
(b) an essentialist conception of peasantry as, notably, in concepts of a 'peasant
mode of production' and its equivalents (see Ennew, Hfirst and Tribe in Journal
of Peasant Studies Vol.4 No.4);
(c) a functionalist conception of the relations between capital and peasants in
which the latter are 'reproduced' by the former (in the pursuit of its interests

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 NOTES ON CAPITAL AND PEASANTRY 61

etc.). It is not capital nor imperialism which reproduces the peasantry - the
peasantry reproduce themselves through their own labour. The question is how
the conditions of production and reproduction are determined by the operations
of capital (in particular social formations and at the level of world economy) and
of the state;
(d) any assumption of either peasant 'irrationality' or peasant 'rationality' - the
latter is often counterposed for progressive ideological reasons against the stereo-
types of peasants held by e.g. many economists, 'experts' and bureaucrats, but it
derives from a subjective view of the problem like that associated with the
attempt to theorise a 'peasant economy' by A.V. Chayanov (see G. Littlejohn in
Sociological Theories of the Economy, ed. B. Hindess).

The Destruction of Natural Economy

3. The category of natural economy suggests social formations in which the
production of use-values is dominant, which does not exclude simple exchange
(exchanges of material surpluses between producers at a rudimentary level of the
social division of labour). The postulate of natural economy is taken as a useful
abstraction from which to begin, and is not a historical observation as such; it
makes no presuppositions about different forms of natural economy, nor the
relations governing production and the appropriation of surplus-labour (whether
on a communal or class basis) in different pre-capitalist modes of production.

4. The destruction of natural economy takes a variety of forms according to

the character of pre-existing social formations, the destructive force and its
historical context. Our concern is not with the kinds of destruction associated
with the epoch and methods of primitive accumulation, i.e., slave raiding and
trading, the collection of natural products by coerced labour, and other forms
of plunder.

5. The primary focus here is on the destruction of natural economy by the

penetration of commodity relations in a more or less systematic fashion. In
much of Africa this process is connected with the advent of colonial rule and has
occurred mostly in the present century. In many instances various means of
compulsion were used to effect the initial break in the reproduction cycle of
systems of natural economy, means which were supplied by the colonial state.
6. The thrust of the colonial state was to supervise the initial and necessary
penetration of pre-capitalist formations, to organise the conditions of exploitation
of labour and land. As is well known, there were different patterns of exploitation
- land was alienated and appropriated for the production of agricultural and
mineral commodities on estates run by settlers or capitalist companies, and in
mines established by productive capitals of varying size and degrees of concen-
tration. These forms of production require a continuous supply of labour, and
again the state's intervention in establishing labour reserves and ensuring a flow
of migrant labour was often crucial.

7. Another pattern was the establishment of peasant commodity production

which does not involve the direct separation of the producers from the means of
production, nor such drastic changes in the instruments and forms of the labour
process. Despite the limited technical changes in production, however, this
process involves fundamental social changes in the conditions of production and
exchange in which most African producers are engaged. In what follows we

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62 REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

concentrate on this aspect of the incorporation of African social formations in

the circuits of world economy.

8. The crucial moment in the penetration of natural economy by capital is the

breaking of its cycle of reproduction, which is accomplished through the initial
monetization of at least some of its elements. The methods used to effect this
rupture are equally well-known: the imposition of taxes necessitating sources of
cash income; the use of corvee labour in public works (the creation of infra-
structure necessary to the movement of commodities and the maintenance of
'law and order') or in farms organized by the state, by missions or by private
capital; the forced cultivation of particular cash crops.

9. Without involving the direct expropriation of the producers, the pre-existing

economic systems were undermined by the withdrawal of labour from use-value
production whether in agriculture, animal husbandry, hunting or fishing, or in
branches of craft activity: house building, the manufacture of tools, weapons,
and other artifacts. The rupture of the reproduction cycle of natural economy
was also affected through the substitution, in the sphere of necessary con-
sumption, of commodities for use-values previously produced locally or acquired
through simple exchange. The needs of simple reproduction come to include the
consumption of commodities and new needs develop. As Meillassoux and Rey
have pointed out, this process involves the erosion of an entire culture of pro-
duction and the 'disqualification' of many traditional production skills, par-
ticularly in non-agricultural activities.

The Process of Commoditization

10. In elaborating some of the issues and concepts relating to commoditization,
there is no suggestion that this process is a uniform one, that it 'unfolds' through
a sequence of necessary stages, nor that it is complete. Indeed the striking
feature of the commoditization of African peasant economy, as it has occurred
historically, is its extreme unevenness both between social formations and within
them (regional differentiation). This unevenness is tied to the concrete conditions
in which various capitals confront and penetrate different pre-capitalist for-
mations, and is therefore not susceptible to general theoretical formulation.
On the other hand, concepts which help distinguish the forms and extent of
commoditization can contribute to the analysis of social formations in their
specificity.

11. At the level of generality employed here, we are trying to pose relations
between capital and peasants as simple commodity producers 'deposited' his-
torically by the destruction of pre-capitalist modes of production. It is necessary
to emphasize that simple commodity production is a form of production that
can exist in different historical periods and in variant relations with other forms
of production. In the present context, the question concerns the ways in which
the conditions of existence of this form of production in Africa are established
and affected by the penetration of the capitalist mode of production.
12. Simple commodity production designates a form of production the logic
of which is subsistence, in the broad sense of the simple reproduction of the
production of the producers and the unit of production (descriptively, the
household). The needs of simple reproduction are satisfied, at least in part,
through commodity relations: on one side, the production of commodities as
means of exchange to acquire elements of necessary consumption (C-M-C), on

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 NOTES ON CAPITAL AND PEASANTR Y 63

the other side the incorporation of commodities in the cycle of reproduction

as items of productive consumption (e.g. tools, seeds, fertilizers) and individual
consumption (e.g. food, clothing,building materials, kerosene,domestic utensils).
Other more specialized elements of reproduction may also come to be realised
through commodity relations, for example, the monetization of bride-price.

13. In very schematic terms, simple commodity production is distinguished

from capitalist commodity production by its logic of subsistence (meeting the
needs of simple reproduction), as opposed to the logic of the appropriation and
realisation of surplus-value and the accumulation of capital. On the other hand,
the simple commodity producer is not a proletarian as (a) he/she retains some
control over the organization of production (though this is problematic as we
shall see), (b) household production, while occupying a definite place in the
social division of labour internal to the production process (relative to that of
capitalist production enterprises) and therefore cannot produce the 'collective
worker' in Marx's sense. The spatial concentration of peasants, when this occurs,
is not equivalent to the social concentration of workers in capitalist production.

14. Following an initial phase of coercion to establish the conditions of peasant

commodity production, the reproduction of these conditions becomes inter-
nalized in the simple reproduction cycle to the extent that it cannot take place
outside commodity relations. In other words, commodity production becomes
an economic necessity. To meet its needs for cash the household produces
commodities which become, through the circuit of exchange, material elements
of constant capital (raw materials) and variable capital (food).

15. Except for the limiting case of completely specialized commodity pro-
duction, the peasant household continues to produce use-values (agricultural and
non-agricultural) for its direct consumption alongside its production of com-
modities. The social organization of production and distribution within the
household can vary a great deal, and this reflected in the differentiation of
labour processes (along sexual lines, for example) and in different modes of
distribution of use-values and income earned from the sale of commodities.

16. Once commodity relations are incorporated in the reproduction cycle of the
household as an economic necessity, the question of how much of its resources
(in terms of labour-time or of land) are devoted to the production of use-values
and of commodities is secondary, though still important. Simple quantitiative
measures which might show, say, that only 20% of labour-time or 20% of land is
devoted to commodity production, are misleading if they imply that the house-
hold is still basically a 'subsistence' unit (in the narrow sense), only marginally
involved with commodity relations and therefore easily able to withdraw from
them. (To the extent that a low degree of commodity production in this sense
correlates geographically with labour reserve areas or socially with strata of
poorer peasants, this is because the principal commodity produced in these cases
is labour-power itself).

17. So far our discussion does not necessarily indicate any form of capital
other than merchant's capital which organizes the exchange of commodities
produced by peasants, and consumed by them. However, the characterization of
capital-peasant relations at the level of exchange is inadequate. First, it suggests
the peasant as an 'independent' commodity producer, which is not the case.
Second, it suggests a situation of 'superimposition' (of capitalist exchange

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64 REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

relations on pre-capitalist forms of production) rather than a dynamic analysis

which investigates the ways in which capital attempts to regulate the conditions
of peasant production (as well as exchange) without undertaking its direct
organization.

18. There were various interests involved in the production and supply of cash
crops in the colonial economies. These included the metropolitan industries
which consumed the crops as elements of constant capital; the large trading
companies which organized the collection of cash crops (directly or through
intermediaries) and their subsequent export to the industries of the particular
colonial power or to the world market; the colonial state which was interested
in the extention of commodity relations for several reasons: to increase its
sources of revenue (to meet the costs of administration, and of infrastructural
development, and to contribute if possible to imperial investment funds), to
ensure the supply of raw materials to the industries of the home country, and at
the ideological level, to turn Africans into 'economic men', producers and
consumers of commodities, as part of the programme of the 'civilising mission'.

19. These various interests could not depend for the supply of the commodities
required - in sufficient quantities and of sufficient quality - on the apparent
whims of the peasant producers (e.g. the notorious so-called backward-sloping
supply curve of labour or of commodities, resistance to new cultivation practices).
The industrial interests, the trading companies and the state combined to attempt
to regulate what was grown, how it was grown, the quality of the produce, as
well as to establish monopolistic pricing and marketing arrangements. This
means in effect that the branches of the imperial trading companies and the
apparatuses of the colonial state - despite their mercantile and politico-ad-
ministrative form - had to perform certain functions associated with productive
capital. While the immediate organization of the production process remained in
the hands of the peasants, their production and reproduction was determined by
the development of commodity relations, including the economic and political
measures such as cultivation bye-laws, compulsory land-improvement schemes,
and credit and extension services, which tied the producers more closely to
particular kinds of production.

The Simple Reproduction 'Squeeze'

20. As the logic of household economy is determined by the needs of simple
reproduction and not by a logic of accumulation regulated at the enterprise
level by the operation of prices of production (realisation of an average rate of
profit), its economic 'behaviour' is different to that of a capitalist economy.
For example, falling prices are experienced by household economy as a deterio-
ration of the terms of exchange of the commodities it produces relative to those
it needs for simple reproduction (the circuit C-M-C), which means a reduction in
levels of consumption or an intensification of commodity production, or both
simultaneously. This can be termed the simple reproduction 'squeeze' and it has
a number of implications.

21. The simple reproduction 'squeeze' does not operate at the level of the terms
of exchange only, as their deterioration raises the costs of production both
directly (increased- costs of means of production) and indirectly (increased costs
of reproducing the producers). The costs of production can also be raised in
other ways - (a) by the exhaustion of both land and labour given the techniques

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 NOTES ON CAPITAL AND PEASANTRY 65

of cultivation employed, (b) by rural development schemes which encourage or

impose more expensive means of production (improved seeds, tools, more
extensive use of fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) with no assurance that there will be
increased returns to labour commensurate with the costs incurred. Both these
points deserve fuller comment.

22. The precariousness of the material and technical basis of peasant production
combines with the pressures exerted by commodity relations to determine the
simple reproduction 'squeeze'. As much of peasant production in Africa is
fuelled by human energy, and as techniques of land use in many cases exhaust
the soil after a certain period, the intensification of production occurs (more
labour-time on poorer or more distant soils) which increases the costs of pro-
duction and reduces the returns to labour. Costs of production can increase both
in terms of labour-time and, as indicated, in monetary terms - the replacement
of means of production and acquisition of new means of production in the
attempt to increase yields. The low level of development of the productive
forces in peasant agriculture means that the household is extremely vulnerable to
failure in any of its material elements of production. The vagaries of climate; the
deterioration in soils which are not easily substitutable because of competition
for land or the costs of clearing new land (a deterioration not uncommonly
caused by the very techniques of cultivation promoted by 'development'
schemes); the incidence of crop disease (especially of crops which represent
a major investment of labour-time), of animal diseases (affecting draught animals
or animals with other functions in terms of use or exchange), and of disease and
death or infertility in the household (reducing the supply of labour - all testify
to the vulnerability of peasant farming.

23. As far as rural development programmes are concerned, these objectively

operate to incorporate the peasantry further into commodity relations, and
attempt to standardize and rationalize peasant production of commodities for
the domestic and international markets. The regulations of such schemes often
dictate very precisely the forms of the labour-process to be employed and
represent a more direct intervention in the organization of production. They
tie the producers in various ways to the use of particular techniques of culti-
vation, often to a greater expenditure of labour-time, and to direction and
sanctions by the development agencies concerned.

24. The more commodity relations and acquisition of a cash income become
conditions of reproduction, then shortfalls in production and/or income can lead
to a cycle of indebtedness. Studies of peasant economy in a number of capitalist
social formations have demonstrated the phenomena of 'starvation rents' (the
payment by poorer peasants of higher than average rents to secure a plot of land
for minimal reproduction needs), and of peasants selling their food crop after
harvest in order to meet immediate cash needs, and subsequently having to buy
food at higher prices. Similar in principle to the latter is the practice of crop-
mortgaging (to richer peasants, local traders or larger-scale merchant's capital)
in order to acquire cash in the case of emergencies.

25. The objective of the simple reproduction 'squeeze' then is to act as one of
the mechanisms of intensifying the labour of the household to maintain or
increase the supply of commodities without capital incurring any costs of
management and supervision of the production process.

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66 REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

The Extent of Commoditization

26. Our remarks so far have concerned the establishment and extension of
commodity relations described in general terms. It is necessary to introduce the
concept of the intensification of commodity relations which can help distinguish
the various ways in which, and degrees to which, peasant production is con-
stituted and household reproduction realised through commodity relations.

27. In any concrete analysis this entails consideration of the extent and forms
of capitalist development of the economy of a social formation as a whole, that
is, examining the place of peasant production in the social division of labour, its
relations with other forms of production including capitalist agriculture and
industry, the overall development of the circulation of commodities and money,
and so on. At the level of household economy the intensification of commodity
relations refers to the degree to which the reproduction cycle is realised through
the production and exchange of commodities. Both these aspects can be illus-
trated in the case of food production and the satisfaction of food needs.

28. Peasants specializing in the commercial production of food can, in principle,

consume a greater proportion of their crop in the event of a poor harvest although
this restricts their ability to purchase other commodities. Those peasants who
specialize in cash-crops which have little or no use-value to the producers are
more vulnerable to short-falls in production, to the extent that the labour-time,
land and money used in commodity production reduces the resources available
for food production.

29. When food needs are satisfied on a regular basis by purchase this signifies
that commodity relations have developed to a higher level. It reflects a more
advanced social division of labour in which some peasants specialize in the
commercial production of food, some of which is directed through to the
market to peasants engaged in other branches of commodity production, or in
which food is produced on capitalist farms with higher levels of productivity
(of labour) and is available more cheaply than food produced within the house-
hold.

30. The coexistence of peasant and capitalist forms of production in agriculture

raises the question of competition between the two. It was observed by Engels,
Kautsky and Lenin that the ability of simple commodity producers both to
reduce their standards of consumption and to continue to produce commodities
in the face of deteriorating terms of exchange, means that they compete effec-
tively with capitalist enterprises producing the same commodities (this being
precisely the effect of the simple reproduction 'squeeze', and a form of com-
petition involving the devalorization of peasant labour-time - see below).

31. There is also the situation where industrial consumers of agricultural com-
modities promote their production by peasants (under contract agreements) to
ensure a continuous and regulated supply to the factory or processing plant. This
is another particular form of specialization which signifies an intensification of
commodity relations, bringing small producers into a more direct relation with
productive capital. The latter (like the rural development agencies already
mentioned) is then able to determine to a greater degree the forms and conditions
of production.

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 NOTES ON CAPITAL AND PEASANTR Y 67

Differentiation of the Peasantry

32. The differentiation of the peasantry is a subject of considerable confusion
and to avoid such confusion a clear analytical distinction has to be established
(although empirically, as those who have done research in rural areas of Africa
will appreciate, the distinction is often less easy to establish). The distinction
concerns differentiation in the sociological sense - indicators of inequality
derived from a problematic in which 'social class' is constituted in terms of
some or other scale of privilege and deprivation, and differentiation in the
materialist sense which poses class in terms of the social relations of production.

33. On the first and more descriptive sense of differentiation, a wide range of
variation in the relative wealth or poverty of households is encountered in many
rural situations. In the first place these are differences in the accumulation and
consumption of use-values, which in itself is unable to indicate socially significant
differences at the level of production. Much of the time these differences in
standards of consumption are related to factors that are random with respect to
the relations of production. They include the vulnerability of individual house-
holds to disasters of the kind indicated above, sources of income outside house-
hold production (e.g. regular remittances of presents from relatives in wage
or salaried employment), and the 'demographic differentiation' stressed by
Chayanov which correlates the size and relative prosperity of households with
their position in the cycle of generational reproduction. Advantages in the
conditions of production which are initially distributed randomly (household
size and composition, more fertile land, better access to sources of -irrigation
or transport, savings accumulated from wage-labour) can contribute to class
differentiation but this is by no means a necessary development.

34. Differentiation in the materialist sense is tied to the conditions in which

wealth becomes capital, when it is not consumed individually but productively
through investment in means of production. It is this which gives a content to
the tripartite classification of 'poor', 'middle' and 'rich' peasants in terms of the
relations of production:
(a) 'Poor' peasants unable to reproduce themselves by household production
exchange their labour-power on a regular basis and come to form a category
reproduced through the scale of labour-power. It was in this context that Lenin
warned against 'too stereotyped an understanding of the theoretical proposition
that capitalism requires the free, landless worker' (Development of Capitalism in
Russia, p.178). He was referring here to agricultural workers who retain a small
plot for cultivation. The access to a small plot does not make them 'peasants'
but insofar as it contributes to their subsistence reduces the wages paid by
those who employ them. They constitute a rural proletariat in the process of
formation.
(b) 'Middle' peasants are able to reproduce themselves through family labour
and land but in specific relations with other strata of the peasantry and with
other forms of production. It is these relations through which middle peasant
households are constituted that determine the relative stability or instability of
the reproduction of a middle peasantry.
(c) 'Rich' peasants or kulaks accumulate sufficiently to invest in production
through the purchase of superior means of production and/or labour power; in
short, insofar as they initiate and maintain a cycle of extended reproduction
based on accumulation they come to form a category of capitalist farmers.

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68 REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

35. Several further comments are in order. Evidence of the exchange of labour-
power is not sufficient to establish class differentiation. On one hand, it is not
uncommon to find peasant households which both sell and buy labour-power for
different purposes and at different moments in the annual cycle of economic
activity. On the other hand, the exchange of labour-power may be concealed by
forms of payment other than money-wages, and may be disguised by ostensibly
'traditional' forms of cooperation and reciprocity.

36. Differentiation in class terms is another dimension of the intensification of

commodity relations to be added to our previous observations, in that the
homogeneity of the conditions of household economy (as an economy of simple
reproduction) is broken up as means of production are capitalized and labour-
power becomes a commodity, exchanged on a systematic basis within the rural
economy. However, differentiation of the peasantry is not a necessary condition
nor effect of the intensification of commodity relations - this will depend on
the concrete conditions in which intensification occurs.

37. It is worth recalling the original Russian connotation of 'kulak' as an 'all-

round' agent of the extension of commodity relations - an economic agent who
not only operates as a commercial farmer employing labour-power but alsc
rents out farm machinery, acts as a local merchant's and moneylending capital,
investing in crop purchasing, retail business, transport and credit, and as a
productive capital establishing small-scale processing and manufacturing enter-
prises. This is particularly important in Africa where, given the relative back-
wardness of circuits of exchange in many areas, capital accumulated in agriculture
is often invested in mercantile and transport activities which yield a better rate
of return than reinvestment in production. This can help account for the limited
formation of agrarian capital and the limited differentiation of units of pro-
duction simultaneously with the extension (and intensification) of commodity
relations.

Capital, State and Peasantry

38. The question of conceptualizaing the relations of production through which
peasant production is constituted has not yet been posed directly, although it
has been suggested that this question is to be pursued in the relations between
peasant households and capital rather than by invoking modes of production
other than the capitalist mode. The latter approach, that of various versions of
the 'articulation' of modes of production, is precluded for reasons which can
only be briefly summarized here.

39. Fuller discussion of the arguments against a peasant or simple commodity

mode of production will be found in the papers cited in the introduction (para
2). It should be noted that formulations of a peasant or simple commodity mode
of production (and some versions of a 'domestic mode of production') ultimately
come down to relations within the unit of production (the household) and its
mode of economic calculation (as a unit of simple reproduction). At best these
formulations may elaborate the nature of simple commodity production as a
fonr of production but cannot satisfy questions concerning the relations of
production through which it is constituted, a problem that is not resolved by
appealing to an articulated combination of peasant and capitalist modes of
production.

40. Another type of articulation theory suggests that pre-capitalist modes of

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 NOTES ON CAPITAL AND PEASANTR Y 69

production are subjected to a process of "dissolution/conservatism' by the

capitalist mode. In this case, the relations of production in which peasants are
engaged represent particular and determinate combinations of pre-capitalist
(e.g. the domestic community, the lineage mode, the feudal mode) and capitalist
relations of production. While attempts to pursue a theory of articulation have
been useful in emphasizing the variant modes of penetration of pre.capitalist
formations by capital, and the variant forms of the development of commodity
relations, they encounter several basic problems. One is that it makes little
sense to talk of the 'conservation' of modes of production whose conditions of
reproduction, it is admitted, have been destroyed by capitalism even if the forms
of production have not been completely transformed. Second, theories of
articulation tend to be functionalist in the sense that the degree and forms of
'dissolution/conservation' are held to be determined by what is functional for
capital. Third, in these theories pre-capitalist modes of production and the
capitalist mode 'meet' essentially at the level of exchange (although pre-capitalist
ruling classes are sometimes suggested as the agency mediating capitalist relations
of production).
41. Two alternative lines of approach to the relations of production have been
indicated above. The first is that of investigating the relations of simple com-
modity producers with (various forms of) capital in varying concrete conditions.
The second is that of investigating the internal differentiation of simple com-
modity producers (towards capitalist farmers and wage-workers). We have been
at pains to emphasize that the latter 'classic model' is a special case of the first
set of relations, and not its sole or necessary form of development.
42. Without providing any definitive answer to the question of the relations of
production, a number of issues can be indicated within the framework employed
here. One set of issues concerns how the conditions of production are determined
by the circuit of capital, and the question of effective possession of the means of
production and effective control of the production process. While the degree of
effective control exercised by capital sometimes appears to be virtually total
(e.g. as in out-grower arrangements, and as in some rural development schemes)
- and this has prompted characterisations of small commodity producers as
'semi' or 'disguised' proletarians - the process stops short of full proletariani-
zation in that the separation of the producers and the means of production is
not complete, and the individualized production of the household is not replaced
by a socialized production process, 'set in motion' by capital.
43. This suggests that the content of the relations between peasants and capital
has to be related to the struggle between the direct producers and capital over
the conditions of labour in the sphere of production and over the distribution
and realisation of the product, up to the moment of complete expropriation and
direct control of production by capital (which is the basis of a different kind of
struggle). The resistance of peasant producers is manifested in a number of
ways: refusal to adopt new cultivation practices or their sabotage (thus peasant
'conservatism'), bearing in mind that such measures introduce further elements
of risk in the already precarious basis of household production; peasant 'strikes'
involving the refusal to grow certain crops or cutting back on their production,
i.e. attempts to withdraw at least partially from commodity relations, or to find
alternative sources of cash income (e.g. labour migration); evasion of crop-
grading regulations and of the terms of exchange imposed by state or other
monopolistic agencies of merchant's capital (by smuggling and other forms

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70 REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

of illicit marketing) in order to realise a higher return to labour; as well as

political actions, including acts of violence, against agents of capital and state
functionaries who confront the peasants.

44. On the other side, the movement of capital to determine the conditions of
small commodity production and exchange can be described broadly in terms of
the 'vertical concentration' of the producers. The 'classic model' of capitalist
development in agriculture incorporates the expropriation of the peasantry
and the horizontal concentration of means of production (land, machinery,
labour-power) in units of production equivalent to industrial enterprises in
their organization of production and modes of economic calculation. Vertical
concentration refers to the coordination, standardization, and (greater or lesser)
supervisions of the production of numerous individual small producers through a
central agency whether this represents productive capital directly (as in out-
grower arrangements), forms of merchant's capital which thereby actively
intervene in the organization of production, or whether the agency is that of a
cooperative or other state-managed scheme.
45. In The Development of Capitalism in Russia Lenin gave examples of the
process of vertical concentration in conditions in which it was more profiltable
for productive capital to invest in processing and manufacturing enterprises
consuming commodities produced by peasants (production it could find ways of
regulating) rather than undertaking the production of those commodities itself.
A.V. Chayanov in the final chapter of his work on Peasant Farm Organization
also drew attention to vertical concentration brought about by the intervention
of trading capital in the conditions of production, and by certain kinds of
cooperatives.

46. At this point it is useful to make more explicit the operation of state forms
of capital. It is generally true that in Africa, as compared with Latin America or
Asia, there has been less direct involvement in agricultural production of large-
scale productive capitals (for example, international agri-business companies).
The further development of commodity relations since independence cannot be
discussed without considering the role of the state, of which there are two
important aspects in this context. The first is that the economic role of the state
has to be located in relation to the possibilities of accumulation by the ruling
classes which have formed since independence, whether they are reproduced and
accumulate on the basis of individual or state property or some combination of
the two forms. Their reproduction as classes and their ability to accumulate are
tied to the development of the economies of the particular social formations in
which they exist; that is, their ability to appropriate surplus-labour and to
establish an accumulation fund is closely related to the further development of
commodity production within their countries. In this sense, they have a more
direct interest in the development of commodity relations within anv given
country than international companies which mobilize capital and switch invest-
ments on a global basis.

47. The second aspect (related to the first) is that the state acts to promote the
extension and intensification of commodity relations in conditions where it
might not be immediately profitable for productive and finance capitals to do
so. The lack of capital for investment on the necessary scale as well as the lack of
technical and managerial expertise to help explain the major role of aid (bilateral
or multilateral as in the case of the World Bank) in the promotion of rural

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 NOTES ON CAPITAL AND PEASANTRY 71

development schemes which provide infrastructure for the further development

of commodity relations (communications, energy, storage, local processing
facilities, education and health schemes), or the planning and financing of
production schemes (agricultural machinery, irrigation equipment, improved
seeds, fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides etc.). In the past such schemes have
concentrated on the production of export crops and have usually incorporated
'progressive farmer' incentives (which contribute to the differentiation of the
peasantry). In recent years another strategy has emerged, not necessarily a
contradictory one, of encouraging food production for national self-sufficiency
and providing production inputs and credits to the 'poorer rural sectors'.
48. The reasons for this new emphasis can be hypothesized - the chronic
state of food production, particularly the commodity production of food
staples in many African countries; the political instability associated with food
shortages and inflationary food prices in the cities; the cost in foreign exchange
of food imports to make up the shortages in domestic production. While capital
in general has an interest in the extension and intensification of commodity
relations, there is also the more specific interest in extending the market of those
capitals engaged in the production of agricultural inputs (see Feder in Journal
of Peasant Studies Vol.3 No.3, also S. George, How the Other Half Dies, Penguin
Books), as well as the interest of the ruling class, already alluded to, in deepening
the material basis of appropriation and accumulation. This means, in short,
that alongside the commoditization associated with the differentiation of the
peasantry and the investment of large-scale productive capitals in agriculture, a
major impetus to the further development of commodity relations comes from
the operation of state-managed forms of capital. These represent an alliance
between the apparatuses of the state which organize the political, ideological
and administrative conditions of the further penetration of capital into peasant
agriculture, and the provision of the financial and technical means of this pene-
tration by either private capitals of the particular form of finance capital repre-
sented by the World Bank and other aid agencies.

49. Rural development schemes promoted through this alliance need not have
the same rationale nor the same objective effects as far as the particular forms of
the development of commodity relations are concerned. In some cases they
amount to a quasi-dispossession of the producers by converting land and other
means of production into state property (in the economic sense, not necessarily
juridically), which is related to the struggle of the direct producers and capital/
state over the effective possession of the means and organization of production
(e.g. the process occurring in Tanzania from villagization). Alternatively, differen-
tiation may be encouraged with incentives to 'progressive farmers' which con-
solidates and develops further private property in land and other means of
production. Again, the effect may be to reproduce a relatively stable middle
peasantry engaged in specialized forms of commodity production in particular
relations with productive capital (this situation is analysed with great specificity
in the work by M.P. Cowen on household production in Central Province,
Kenya). These different possible paths of development indicate the heterogeneity
of forms of peasant production, the dangers of facile generalization, and the
need in investigating particular peasantries to examine their relations with other
forms of production and the overall development of commodity relations.

50. The second set of issues concerning the relations of production in which

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72 REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

peasants are engaged concerns the mechanisms and forms of the appropriation
of surplus-labour. The most obvious solution to the question of appropriation is
to see it as effected through exchange, the necessarily unequal exchange through
which merchant's capital (whether private or represented in public corporations
- state marketing boards, crop agencies etc.) makes its profit. This solution is
inadequate for two reasons. The first is that at a theoretical level it can only
suggest relations between merchant's capital and 'independent' commodity
producers, whereas we have tried to argue that the site of capital-peasant relations
in the first place is the struggle over the condition of production, which affects
the specific modes of appropriation of surplus labour.
51. Second, the operation of the law of value in relation to peasant production
is problematic. Short of full specialization in commodity production the repro-
duction of the producers and of the unit of production is realised partially
through use-value production which lies outside the operation of the law of
value (and may be said to 'resist' it). This is one key to the 'cheapness' of peasant
produced commodities (more often noted in discussions of the 'cheap labour'
of migrant workers): that the exchange-value of the commodities is lowered to
the extent to which the reproduction of the producers is 'subsidized' through
use-value production drawing on the labour of all members of the household
above a certain age.
52. A second key to the 'cheapness' of peasant produced commodities is their
competition with the same commodities produced under capitalist conditions
(with a higher development of the productive forces and a higher productivity
of labour - both for technical reasons and because of the socialization of the
production process). The objective effect of this competition is the devalorization
of household labour-time and hence of the value of the commodities produced.
This makes it impossible to sustain the 'unequal exchange' theory put forward
by A. Emmanuel and S. Amin which argues the exchange of unequal values,
failing to distinguish this from the exchange of unequal amounts of labour
(the relationship between labour-time and value being mediated by the co-
existence and relations of different forms of production and of differential
labour productivities in the circuit of capital as a whole).
53. It is because of the intrinsic backwardness of simple commodity production
in peasant agriculture and its relations with capitalist production in agriculture
and industry, that the value of commodities produced by peasants cannot be
measured solely in terms of the labour-time required for their production, but is
subject to all the determinants of exchange-value, which converge and are
regulated at the level of the world market.
54. Of course for the peasant, as for the wage-worker, there is no 'surplus-
labour' insofar as all labour is expended in order to meet the costs of simple
reproduction. While the mechanism of appropriation of peasants' surplus-labour
takes the form of exchange, our argument suggests that appropriation has to be
located first in terms of production. This raises the question of the production
and appropriation of surplus-value, albeit in less determinate conditions than
those of capitalist production. Several issues follow. Attempts to establish, at
least in principle, the rate of exploitation of peasants and the mass of profit
realised from such exploitation will need to take into account the ways in which
peasant labour-time is devalorized through its relations with other economic
forms in the social division of labour, both within particular social formations
and at the level of world economy.

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 NOTES ON CAPITAL AND PEASANTR Y 73

55. Second, the mechanisms of surplus-value appropriation would appear

typically to be those of absolute surplus-value (lengthening of the working day,
intensification of household labour). However, the extraction of relative surplus-
value becomes a possibility with the intensification of commodity relations
when these involve the widespread use of superior means and techniques of
production (the production of a greater mass of commodities within the same
time), and/or the reduction of the value and monetary cost of the commodities
consumed by the producers - both of which reduce the time necessary for the
reproduction of the producers.

Conclusion
56. These notes have tried to outline in a provisional way some of the issues
raised by contemporary forms of the agrarian question in Africa, issues which
clearly require far more theoretical and empirical investigation. No definitive
solutions have been offered but the position taken here is that peasants have to
be located in their relations with capital and the state, in other words, within
capitalist relations of production mediated through forms of household pro-
duction which are the site of a struggle for effective possession and control
between the producers and capital/state. It may be inferred that in this way
peasants are posed as 'wage-labour equivalents' (Clarke in Critique of Anthro-
pology No.8, also Banaji in Capital and Class No.3), but in a relative sense that
limits the subjugation and real subsumption of household labour by capital to
the extent that the producers are not fully expropriated not dependent for their
reproduction on the sale of labour-power through the wage-form.

57. These notes are also limited by their primary focus on the level of economic
relations but the conclusions at this level of analysis - that there is no single and
essential 'peasantry' - militates a fortiori against any such homogenization of
peasants at the level of politics and ideology. There can be no uniform 'model' of
class action by peasants nor any single and abstract formulation of the relation of
peasants to revolutionary politics, whether such a formulation expresses a blanket
optimism or a blanket scepticism concerning their 'revolutionary potential'.

The author is indebted for a number of discussions of the agrarian question to many com-
rades in East Africa and Europe. Insofar as these notes respond to comments and criticisms
concerning a previous paper (Capital and Peasantry in the Epoch of Imperialism, Occasional
Paper 77.2, Economic Research Bureau, University of Dar es Salaam), particular thanks are
due to Peter Gibbon, Gary Littlejohn, Mahmood Mamdani, Wolfgang Schoeller and Gavin
Williams. Bibliography: V.I. Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia and K. Kaut-
sky, The Agrarian Question (English summary in Economy and Society Vol.5 No.1) are
classic Marxist sources on the agrarian question. General discussions of capitalism and
peasantry in Africa include the article by Saul and Woods in Peasants and Peasant Societies
ed. T. Shanin, Penguin Books, and those by L. Cliffe and G. Williams in 7he Political Eco-
nomy of Contemporary Africa ed. P.C. Gutkind and I. Wallerstein, Sage Publications. A
number of case studies are collected in L 'agriculture africaine et le capitalisme ed. S. Amin
(Paris, 1975). On the articulation of modes of production, see C. Meillassoux, Femmes,
greniers et capitaux (Paris, 1975) and P.-Ph. Rey, Les alliances de classes (Paris, 1973) and
Capitalisme negrier (Paris, 1976). The important work by M.P. Cowen referred to includes
the following papers available from the Institute for Development Studies, University of
Nairobi - 'Wattle production in the Central Province: capital and household commodity
production, 1903-1964', 'Capital and peasant households', and 'Notes on capital, class and
household production'.

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